Shackleton - Operation Have Sea

[Shulsky]

Bristol Bay Station, Bering System
25 MAR 835 AS

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Three days. They’d loitered by Bristol Bay for three days and, all things said, the attention had died down. Preliminary repairs had been made to the outer hull, that was true enough, as well as more thorough inspections done on the reactors and the vent-coolant systems that had failed before during the Omega-7 transit, but by and large Booth knew that such things were just supplementary information for Unioners.

He’d had several meetings with the Board, various members and the like. The feelings had been mixed from several, the older feeling like Booth was moving too fast about the whole thing, latter feeling like a greater degree of firepower than ever before. True, as the Mollys in Dublin had proved, mining vessels and other retrofitted transports could prove able in a pinch, but there was always something iffy about that whole idea to the Zoner. The miners would doubtless get called on if anything happened one way or another in their systems; something that would threaten Bristol stations would threaten their moorings, their ships, their livelihoods, but they’d never be sailors, marines. That wasn’t their job. In his mind, there needed to be that distinction, that dedication towards training and the like.

Of course, that had caused further talks. The idea that the ship would be running a deficit, a bigger one than any of the current security vessels, made the most frugal executives balk and calculate. He’d been glad that Blake had been a supporter of the idea before it had all gone through, and was a supporter still. They’d be able to shift enough commodities to pay for the repairs and the operating costs, Shackleton and a few of the other more cooperative companies in Bristol.

Booth sighed as he stood at the docking collar. The talk had been long, and she hadn’t been happy. Adriana wasn’t someone who enjoyed dredging up the past like that, said it had been dangerous, that’d it would continue to be dangerous, that there was so much they’d built since then and even more they could build. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, exactly, that they could get as the company stood now. A house on Erie would never be possible, nor one on any planet in Liberty or Rheinland really. Some part of Booth didn’t trust the government, the nearby people, the language barriers, how they’d react if they ever found out where the family was from, a variety of issues with both those Houses. He’d never want to go down to Gran Canaria, nor out to Pygar, and the stations they were on were as good as any other station they could go to. Booth really, really wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to go next, or really if she wanted to get something better at all. Some part of the Zoner figured she wanted him to finally settle down, and yet…and yet he still had that itch to do more, make more. He sighed.

Three days. Finally they’d pull the ship in. Finally they’d start getting down to the actual work. It was about time.

One boot thudded against the deck-plate, and another, and another.
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The hull shook a good deal less than before. The Tanner Belt flew on past, the pitted and patched hull no longer letting loose fuel and debris into the void. The drum spun, as it should, even as one of the mounted engines had failed its recent light-off. They’d been forced to compromise, kill an engine on the other side too, but altogether there was a sense of good, honest pride towards the whole of the issue. The crew of Endeavor had gotten underway again, and it’d happen more times after that. Booth was near-sure of it.

Bridge crew ran smoother, too. They’d started getting into that rhythm, the call-backs and copies and affirms. Some of them, he knew, had sort of missed that life. Some of them, he knew, were at the very same stations they’d been at before, the last time they’d manned a cruiser such as this. A good number were younger folks, people who had been dredged up at Erie and elsewhere, the Omegas out to the Omicrons, stragglers from a number of port-calls and visits. He’d been smart to pick the right ones for the Powhatan, and they’d performed well for the years that stretched on. They kept performing well now. It was comforting.

Larger rocks came into view. In the distance, the sensors filtered out the Tanner, found instead a number of small craft. The background noise was filled with the steady, tinny beep-beep-beep as the firing control system picked out individual craft amid the shifting rocks, acquiring them and loosing them with a singular beep before picking them out again. Calls and call-backs came and went, the scanners holding a few long enough to get identifications. Arbeiters and Soldats, Unioner vessels out of Pacifica. A breath out at the sight. It’d have been worse if they were damned Rogues.

The weapons systems, of course, wasn’t quite up to speed yet…for a moment, Booth had a thought, a cruel little thought. What if the man before, Direktor Hollywood, hadn’t had as much control over Pacifica as he’d said before? What if he’d been removed in that interim period, since they’d last talked? What if there had been a trap laid by the more creatively stupid members of that organization, the ones who wanted a cruiser for themselves like the greedy bastards they were? He paused. What if. What if, what if. If that happened, keep calm, bring the ship into Pacifica, and overload the reactor.

Space, he hated the what if.

A pause came, tense enough as before when they were resurrecting the ship for the first time. It went away far quicker though. A thick Rheinlander accent came through over communications, in and out as the transmitter - or indeed the receiver - failed intermittently.

”Bristol vessel, welcome to Bering. We are to escort you the rest of the way. Do not alter your course suddenly or you will be fired on.”

“Endeavor copies all.”

Well. There were worse ways for a thing to go, the Zoner supposed, even if the reception was as frosty as could be. ‘Welcome to Bering’...some of the bridge crew were already shaking their head at the bold moves of the small craft as they began to take up escorting positions around the Judicator. Of course, the bombers were far in the rear, positioned to remove the engines about as quickly as one breathed, and the fighters moved in and out of sight with weaves and dukes. ‘Welcome to Bering’ was a statement that the system wasn’t Bristol’s, it was theirs, and though Bristol Bay Station disagreed by mere existence it was clear some pilots still held on to the old beliefs of Unioner supremacy.

They moved on, though, the comms not crackling a bit. No Liberty Rogue vessels came and went either past their flight plan, something Booth suspected - if he were being charitable - that Hollywood had a small hand in. At least, to a degree. They had shifted off the transponder some half hour before, once the cruiser had gotten out of standard sensor range from the trade lanes, so in theory the Unioners could claim they were bringing a prize of their own creation. In theory. He bristled at the idea of them taking the ship, or really rather trying to, and put the concerns away. They’d made plans on how to respond to that.

Another rock came into view, though, as well as the scaffolding attached to one side that made out three drydocks, clear and industrious as Alster’s. A Hel class stood in one, another outside the docks in what seemed like a refitting stage of maintenance or production, while Grendel gunships occupied the second in a number of stages. Tugs and equipment ferries, too small to ever be sold on the open market for a pilot not owning a shipyard, moved here and there with their loads while fighter patrols made lazy loops about the cleared section of the asteroid field. It was vaguely impressive, even with the broken nose of a Rheinlander Bismarck jutting out from one face of the asteroid, and something that Booth had definitely never seen the likes of.

They got the docking instructions, though, and came in for the final approach as the escort veered off to other, more normal duties. Three days, Booth thought, finally they’d gotten over. Finally they could start getting to work. He breathed out.

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Operation Have Sea